The Ostrovo Unit was a Field hospital unit with Transport Coloumn of the Scottish Women's Hospitals. It comprised approximately 200 tents [1] and was situated near Lake Ostrovo, Macedonia during the First World War under the command of the Serbian Army. It was often called The America Unit as the money to fund it came from America and except for a few dressing stations, it was the Allied hospital nearest the front.
The unit opened in September 1916 [2] soon after the Battle of Malka Nidzhe (Gornichevo ridge). Gornichevo ridge formed the twin summits of Kaimaktsalan, 7,700 and 8,200 feet above sea level. This ridge had to be captured before Monastir (Bitola on modern British maps) could be re-taken. The first Chief Medical Officer, an Australian, Dr Agnes Elizabeth Lloyd Bennett [2] recorded on the first day that they took 24 cases: "all terribly bad wounds - abdominal, chest, head and compound fractures". On 25 September she wrote: "We now have 160 cases, all bad and it is terribly hard work." During the first eight weeks the America Unit admitted 425 cases of whom sixty died.
The unit was approximately ninety miles west of Salonika and was in a beautiful location. [3] According to its third CMO Dr Isobel Emslie: "It lay quite by itself on a green sward in the hollow of the hills which rose on every side; close by was a clump of ancient elm-trees, the home of families of cawing rooks, and beyond the white tents of the hospital lay Lake Ostrovo."
Miles Franklin wrote: "The royal sunlight on the purple hills! Blue as heaven, high and peaked like cats' teeth, they intensified a longing for the Blue Bogongs that was ten years poignant." Franklin was inspired to write a story, By Far Kaimaktchalan and a piece entitled Somewhere in the Balkans but finished neither. Ne Mari Nishta (It matters nothing) remains her only finished account of her time there. She left in February 1918. [4]
The America Unit was the unit of the Scottish Women's Hospitals in which at least ten Australian women served including Agnes Bennett, Mary De Garis and the novelist Miles Franklin. [4] Other Australians served in a similar unit near Salonika. The Anglo-Irish medical physicist Edith Anne Stoney provided x-ray support to the unit while being based at Salonika. British masseuse and trained physical instructor, Olive Smith joined the unit with Dr Bennett at the start, and worked in the operating theatre and reception, but died of malaria on 6 October 1916. [5]
In Dr Isobel Emslie's words: "The spirit of this unit was a very pleasant one; the big, happy family of women was so entirely thrown on its own resources that it formed a very united body. Most of the sisters had been so much with the Serbians that they had learnt the language and were thoroughly in sympathy with them. Ours was a Serbian Army hospital, and we took our orders directly from Army Headquarters." At the advanced dressing station established three hours drive further up Kaimaktsalan the unit took casualties direct from the battlefield. Dr Bennett wrote of the girls' courage during bombardment. However malaria and dysentery took such a toll on the staff that the station was closed in September 1917.[ citation needed ]
On 30 September 1918 the unit received news of the armistice with Bulgaria and on the morning of 23 October the unit started for northern Serbia with a convoy of nine vehicles on a 311 kilometre trek. All the staff made the trip and the unit set up in an abandoned army barracks in Vranje. The unit was in operation until October 1919. Fifty two of the members of the Vranje Unit were decorated with the Royal Red Cross and several also received the Order of Saint Sava.[ citation needed ]
Eliza Maud "Elsie" Inglis was a Scottish medical doctor, surgeon, teacher, suffragist, and founder of the Scottish Women's Hospitals. She was the first woman to hold the Serbian Order of the White Eagle.
Honoria Somerville Keer was a British surgeon during World War I, where she served as a medical officer with the Girton and Newnham Unit of the Scottish Women's Hospitals for Foreign Service, which offered volunteer opportunities for medical women who were prohibited at the time from serving with the Royal Army Medical Corps. She was honoured by France and Serbia for her services.
The Battle of Malka Nidzhe, also known as the Battle of Gornichevo was the opening battle of the Monastir Offensive. It lasted for three days and ended in victory for the Entente forces.
Olive May Kelso King was an Australian adventurer and mountain climber. During World War I she drove ambulances for the Scottish Women's Hospitals and later the Serbian Army. In the final stages of the war she raised money and set up mobile canteens to help feed the Serbian people. In all, she was awarded four medals by the Serbian government for her work during the war. After World War I, King held a senior volunteer position with Girl Guides Australia. During World War II, she worked as an examiner at the Havilland Aircraft factory.
Jessie Ann Scott MB ChB MD was a New Zealand medical doctor, medical officer and prisoner of war.
Agnes Elizabeth Lloyd Bennett was a New Zealand doctor, a Chief Medical Officer of a World War I medical unit for which she was awarded the Serbian Order of St Sava and later was awarded an O.B.E. for her services in improving the health of women and children.
Dame Louise Margaret Leila Wemyss, Lady Paget, GBE was a British humanitarian, active in the cause of Serbian relief, beginning in World War I, leading the first Serbian Relief Fund unit to Skoplje in November 1914.
Mary Clementina De Garis was an Australian medical doctor. During World War I she worked at the Ostrovo Unit in Serbia for the Scottish Women's Hospitals and after the war worked at Geelong Hospital in Australia. She was an advocate of antenatal and postnatal care.
Isabel Galloway Emslie, Lady Hutton CBE was a Scottish physician who specialised in mental health and social work.
Edith Anne Stoney was a physicist born in Dublin in an old-established Anglo-Irish scientific family. She is considered to be the first woman medical physicist.
The Scottish Women's Hospitals for Foreign Services (SWH) was founded in 1914. It was led by Dr Elsie Inglis and provided nurses, doctors, ambulance drivers, cooks and orderlies. By the end of World War I, 14 medical units had been outfitted and sent to serve in Corsica, France, Malta, Romania, Russia, Salonika and Serbia.
The Scottish Women's Hospital at Royaumont was a medical hospital during World War I active from January 1915 to March 1919 operated by Scottish Women's Hospitals (SWH), under the direction of the French Red Cross and located at Royaumont Abbey. The Abbey is a former Cistercian abbey, located near Asnières-sur-Oise in Val-d'Oise, approximately 30 km north of Paris, France. The hospital was started by Dr Frances Ivens and founder of SWH, Dr Elsie Maud Inglis. It was especially noted for its performance treating soldiers involved in the Battle of the Somme.
Katherine Mary Harley was a suffragist. In 1913 she proposed and organised the Great Pilgrimage on behalf of the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies. During the First World War she helped to found and organise the Women's Emergency Corps.
Elizabeth Ness MacBean Ross was a Scottish physician who worked in Persia among the Bakhtiari people. With training and a post-graduate qualification in tropical medicine, she responded to an appeal for doctors by the Serbian government in 1915 and treated Serbian casualties, most of whom were victims of typhus. Ross's life and work is commemorated by a plaque in her home town of Tain and her death anniversary is commemorated by ceremonies in Serbia, on 14 February.
Katherine Stewart MacPhail OBE was a Scottish surgeon. During World War I, she served as Chief Medical Officer of two units of the Scottish Women's Hospitals for Foreign Service. She cared for the wounded in Serbia, France, and the Thessaloniki Front. In 1921, during her stay in Serbia, she founded the country's first children's hospital. While she is remembered as a national hero in Serbia, she was criticised by some for providing her expertise in Serbia rather than in her own country. Her honours include several medals, plaques, and a postage stamp.
Elizabeth Bertram (1874-1954) was a nursing sister with the Scottish Women's Hospital for Foreign Service in Serbia and Corsica.
Elsie Cameron Corbett JP was a volunteer ambulance driver and major donor to the World War One Scottish Women's Hospital for Foreign Service in Serbia, She was a prisoner of war in 1916 and won medals from the Serbian and British governments. She was also a justice of the peace, a leading suffragist, temperance supporter, folklorist and diarist.
Olive Smith was a masseuse, physical training instructor in the Scottish Women's Hospitals for Foreign Service (SWH) in Serbia in World War I. She died of malaria, within two months of volunteering with Dr Agnes Bennett's SWH unit at Ostrovo, and is buried at the Allies cemetery in Thessaloniki. She is memorialised in her home town Haltwhistle and at the teacher training college she worked at, in Glasgow.
Georgina Davidson MBChB was a Scottish medical doctor who served with the Scottish Women's Hospitals for Foreign Service in Serbia in World War I, and worked along with the Royal Army Medical Corps in war zone hospital services in Malta, Salonika and Constantinople. She was awarded the French Red Cross medal and the British War and Victory medals, and was mentioned in dispatches.
Ishobel Ross was a Scottish nurse and diarist. During World War I she joined the Scottish Women's Hospitals for Foreign Service after hearing a lecture by Elsie Inglis. Ross spent a year on the Balkan front and kept a diary of her experiences. Her diary was later published as Little Grey Partridge: First World War Diary of Ishobel Ross Who Served with the Scottish Women's Hospitals in Serbia. Ross was born on the Isle of Skye and attended Edinburgh Ladies College.
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